Pie Crust

You can’t make good pie without a great crust.  Here it is.

To make a great pie crust you need to nail the proportions of the three main ingredients – flour, fat, and water – and master a few basic techniques.  So let’s break it down and I’ll share all my tips for getting it just right.

Flour

Use all-purpose flour, and I strongly encourage you to weigh your flour.  I explain the rationale for weighing vs. scooping flour on my About page – bottom line, baked goods can be ruined by the addition of too much flour, and pie crust is no exception.

Fat

I use a combination of European-style butter and lard in my pie crust – butter for flavor and lard for texture.  I know, some people may find the idea of lard a little off-putting, but lard contains monounsaturated fat, and is actually healthier than the Crisco shortening my grandmother used, with all of its partially-hydrogenated soybean oil.

You can go with all butter if you must, but lard will give the crust a flaky lightness you just can’t get with an all-butter crust.  Leaf lard is the highest grade of lard, but it’s pricey.  This one is a very good alternative and one I use regularly.  Just make sure you choose a non-hydrogenated lard for baking.

Use the scale to measure the butter and lard – since you already have it handy for weighing the flour.  (You can also use an old-fashioned technique I learned from my grandmother for measuring a fat such as lard:  the water displacement method.  To measure ½ cup of lard, fill a 1-cup liquid measure to the ½-cup mark with cool water, then spoon in small amounts of lard, pushing it down to submerge it, until the water level rises to 1 cup.  Pour off the water and you have exactly ½ cup of lard without the messy job of scraping it out of a measuring cup.)

Water

The recipe gives exact quantities for the flour and fat, and I’ve just advised you to measure them carefully and accurately…but the quantity of water is a range. Why?  How much water a pie crust wants you to add depends on the amount of moisture in the fat (moisture content varies between butter, lard and shortening, and between brands and styles of butter), and on how well the fat is incorporated into the flour before you start adding the water.

Adding too much water can make the crust tough; too little and the dough will be fragile and hard to roll out.  To add just the right amount, go slowly, stop and check the dough between additions, and know what to look for.  You’ve added enough water when the dough just starts to come together in big clumps that resemble a firm cookie dough, as pictured below.  There should not be any piles of dry flour at the bottom of the processor bowl, but the dough should look crumbly, not sticky or wet.

If you consistently use the same brands of butter and lard in your pie crust, you should find that the amount of water you add will be the same from one crust to another.  It’s a myth that the humidity level in the air has an effect on how much water to add – flour does not absorb enough moisture from the air to make a discernible difference.  So once you’ve made a few crusts using this recipe, you’ll have the process down and be confident about how much water to add.

Technique

• I love using a food processor to mix the dough, for a couple of reasons.  First, it’s important to keep the dough as cold as possible, and using the processor protects it from the heat of your hands.  Second, a few quick pulses of the machine will do a very thorough job of cutting the fat into the right size pieces and distributing it evenly throughout the flour.  As I mentioned above in the discussion about water, if the fat isn’t worked in correctly, you’ll have to add too much water in order to get the dough to hold together, and it will be tough.  The proper technique:  add the fat to the flour in the machine and pulse a few times.  Take a peek.  If you see any lump of fat that’s larger than the size of a pea, close the machine and pulse a couple more times.  Stop as soon as you see that all clumps of fat are pea-sized or smaller.  See the patches of light yellow in the rolled-out dough in the photo below?  Those are bits of butter that were left pea-sized when I stopped mixing and therefore weren’t completely worked into the flour – they’re what make the crust flaky.

• Pulse in the water, a tablespoon or two at a time, just until the dough comes together in clumps as shown in the photo in the Water section, above.
• Dump the dough out onto a pastry board.  Working quickly and handling the dough as briefly as possible, gather the dough together into two balls, and flatten them into chubby disks.  Wrap the disks of dough in plastic wrap, and chill for at least 30 minutes.  If you chill the dough for longer than 30 minutes, let it sit out at room temperature for a few minutes before you start rolling – you don’t want it to be rock hard for rolling.
• Lightly but evenly flour the pastry board.  Put one disk of dough in the center of the board, and lightly flour the dough.

• Start to flatten the disk with your rolling pin, by rolling back and forth over it.  Rotate the dough 1/4 turn and repeat.  Do this 2 or 3 times.  The dough will start to form cracks around the edges; pinch these together with your fingers to form a smooth edge.  Doing this now prevents deeper crags from forming later.
• Now start rolling from the center of the dough away from you.  After each outward roll, rotate the dough 1/4 turn.  You’re always rolling from the center out, and rotating after every roll.  If you feel the dough starting to stick to the board, gently slide it to the side and add a little flour to the board underneath it; if the rolling pin starts to stick, add a little flour to the top of the dough.

• Keep rolling until the pastry forms a circle several inches larger than your pie plate.  Don’t worry if the edges are ragged and uneven – if you pinched the cracks in the early stages of rolling you will have avoided any huge fissures, and you’ll trim off any raggedy edges once you get the pastry into the plate.
• To lift the dough into the pie plate, fold it in half and gently lift it into the plate, then unfold it, draping it into the plate.  Never pull or stretch the dough.  Use kitchen shears to trim the dough to a smooth edge with about a 1-inch overhang.
• For a single crust pie, turn the extra inch of dough under to make a double-thick edge, and flute it or add another decorative touch as desired.  For a double crust pie, after you’ve added the filling, tuck the edge of the top crust under the overhang of the bottom crust, and crimp or seal as desired.

So, yes, making a transcendent pie crust is a learned skill but the good news is that while you’re working on perfecting your pie crust technique, you’re going to get to eat pie.  It’s all good!

Making pie crust ahead:

• The dough can be made ahead and chilled or frozen until needed.  Put the plastic-wrapped disks of dough into a zip-lock freezer bag and chill them for up to 2 days, or freeze for up to several months.  Thaw frozen dough overnight in the refrigerator.  When you’re ready to use it (whether it’s been frozen or merely chilled for more than a few hours), remove the dough from the refrigerator and let it sit for 20 to 30 minutes at room temperature to soften slightly before rolling it out.

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